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The Amazon River basin region is a vast territory with an area >7 million km2, encompassing parts of 9 South American countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. The Amazon River, the longest river in the world, traverses the region from west to east, fed by multiple tributaries. The region also contains the largest tropical rainforest in the world, situated on a massive plain whose altitude is near sea level. With a climate characterized by high temperatures and humidity and copious rainfall, the region has the densest and most varied ecosystem in the world.

In Brazil, reportable diseases are the responsibility of the Secretariat of Health Surveillance of the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Health. During 2001-2006, to determine incidence and hospitalization rates, we analyzed 5 diseases (malaria, leishman...

During 2010-2012, an outbreak of 210 cases of malaria occurred in Tumbes, in the northern coast of Peru, where no Plasmodium falciparum malaria case had been reported since 2006. To identify the source of the parasite causing this outbreak, we conduc...

The prevalence of HIV infection among men in a gold mining camp in the Amazon region of Guyana was 6.5%. This high percentage of HIV infection provides a reservoir for the virus in this region, warranting immediate public health intervention to curb ...

Cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania (Vianna) braziliensis is a major health problem in the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil. We propose that the disease emerged as a consequence of the displacement of persons from Ceará to the Amazon ...